


Day Fifty-One (And Counting)

by Drag0nst0rm



Series: Round and Round and Round They Go [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, Groundhog Day, Humor, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:27:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23440201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: Nolofinwe wakes up to find Feanaro about an inch from his face.The morning only gets stranger from there.
Relationships: Fëanor | Curufinwë & Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë
Series: Round and Round and Round They Go [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2172681
Comments: 53
Kudos: 331
Collections: The Tolkien Decameron Project





	Day Fifty-One (And Counting)

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [【翻譯】Day Fifty-One (And Counting)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25284700) by [Tyelpesicil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyelpesicil/pseuds/Tyelpesicil)



> I don't own the Silmarillion.

Nolofinwe wakes up to find Feanaro about an inch from his face.

He thinks he can be forgiven for a quietly strangled scream. Usually when he wakes up with a face that close to his, it’s his wife, or possibly, when they were younger, one of his children. 

Not Feanaro peering down at him like Nolofinwe has just become his latest experiment.

“Good, you’re awake,” Feanaro says with apparent satisfaction. Thankfully, he pulls his face away some, although since he’s still sitting on the edge of the bed, this is still rather awkward.

Nolofinwe looks to the other side rather helplessly in the hopes that Anaire will still be there and will have some kind of idea what’s going on. Unfortunately, she appears to have risen for the day already.

“She’s in your dining room,” Feanaro informs him. “She’s just about to discover there’s a spider on her cup.”

Downstairs, there’s a shriek and the sound of something breaking.

“You put a spider on my wife’s cup?” he says rather blankly. Feanaro is not above pettiness, but he is usually above childish pranks.

“No,” Feanaro says dismissively, and then he moves on, pulling out a sheet of paper that must have been laying beside him. “Number one - “

“How did you even get in here?” Nolofinwe demands, taking advantage of his regained personal space to sit up. _“Why_ are you here?” They are both scheduled to appear before their father in his court today; surely whatever it is could have waited until then.

“I climbed in the window,” Feanaro tells him rather impatiently, and he assumes for a happy moment that his half-brother is joking.

Then he notices the grappling hook hanging over the window ledge and the rope that is trailing behind it. There is also, he realizes with a jolt of dread, a chair tucked under the doorknob as a rudimentary barricade against entrance.

Tensions between he and his half-brother have become high. He had not previously realized that they had become so high that Feanaro would conclude the best method of speaking to him was breaking and entering.

He wonders if it is too late to bury his head under his pillow and pretend this isn’t happening.

Feanaro anticipates this, apparently, because he snatches the pillow away and tucks it under his paper. “Number one,” he says firmly. “You are my brother.”

“Regrettably,” he mutters when Feanaro looks up expectantly.

Feanaro scowls at him. “You are my brother,” he repeats, “and I . . . love . . . you.” He looks like he’s bitten into something sour, but he steamrolls through the sentence regardless.

Nolofinwe gapes at him.

It occurs to him, suddenly, that Feanaro does have a tendency towards experiments and working with dangerous equipment. “Have you hit your head recently?” It’s almost a hopeful question. It would be an explanation, at least. A sensible, rational explanation.

Feanaro ignores this. “Number four,” he announces. “I do not want you dead.”

“I’m . . . glad?”

“Number five. Despite the fact that I hate every single factor that led to your existence, I do not regret your existence itself.”

Nolofinwe wonders if he is supposed to be reciprocating these statements. Feanaro is very clearly waiting for something, and maybe this will all go away if he gets whatever it is. “I’m . . . glad . . . you’re here too, Feanaro.” Well, not here in this room, in this moment, but as a general statement of truth -

Frankly, as a general statement of truth, his life would be a lot easier if Feanaro didn’t exist, but he can’t actually imagine what that would look like, so, yes, he’s glad Feanaro’s here in a general, existential sense.

Feanaro is apparently not interested in this declaration of brotherly sentiment and in fact seems rather annoyed by the interruption. “Number seven."

Nolofinwe wonders what happened to number six, but he quickly decides he does not want to prolong this experience by bringing it up. This seems all the more wise when what Feanaro says is -

"I am sorry for drawing a sword on you.”

“Beg pardon?” Nolofinwe looks around a little frantically, wondering if this happened while he was asleep. There is no sword in evidence, however, and he is growing increasingly concerned that his ‘Feanaro got knocked on the head’ theory is correct.

“Number eight. I am sorry for accidentally killing you.”

“I’m not dead. I have never been dead.” 

For a single moment, it occurs to him that maybe he’s wrong, that maybe this is the Halls of Mandos and the afterlife is far more bizarre than the Valar have led them to believe.

“Not today, I haven’t,” Feanaro says, rolling his eyes, and, alright, Nolofinwe is definitely going for a healer as soon as he thinks he can get past Feanaro to the door. “Number nine. I am sorry for failing to save you on the forty-nine days that followed that accident.”

“Save me from what?” he asks in his best placating voice. Maybe if he edges over to Anaire’s side of the bed . . . 

“Dying,” Feanaro says shortly. “I’m not reading you that list, you never react well to it. Number ten - “ His hand shoots and grabs Nolofinwe’s wrist the second he tries to scoot away. “You’re not going anywhere until I’ve tried everything on this list,” he says grimly.

There are many contests Nolofinwe can win against his brother. Contests of tact, for instance. Contests of sanity, apparently. 

Contests of strength are definitely not among that number, not after Feanaro’s long years at the forge, so Nolofinwe doesn’t even try to tug against his grip. He tries to play along instead. “What exactly are you trying to accomplish?”

“I’m saying everything they want to hear,” Feanaro says. “Starting with statements about you, since you seem to be the center of all this.”

Nolofinwe works very hard to keep his voice steady. “This?”

“For the past fifty days, you have died every day,” Feanaro says, and there is a terrifying bleakness in his eyes that Nolofinwe has never seen before. “And then I wake up, and Makalaure is singing somewhere downstairs, and you’re alive again, and no one remembers anything. Except me.”

“So you . . . “

“Have been trying to stop it,” Feanaro says impatiently, but there is still that terrible bleakness in his eyes, and it hits Nolofinwe, suddenly, that for all the irritableness Feanaro has displayed today, the terrible rage that has been building between them for years is entirely gone.

Thinking he has seen Nolofinwe die fifty times is apparently enough to do that to him.

He realizes then, that whether or not he believes Feanaro, he at least believes _Feanaro_ believes this, and that’s concerning enough in itself.

“You said they,” he remembers. “Who’s they?”

“The Valar, of course,” Feanaro says, still impatient. “Who else would have the power?” 

That’s . . . valid. If this were to happen, the Valar would be the ones to do it, but _why?_

“I’ve tried saving you, and that never works,” Fenaaro says. “You just die a different way, so that can’t be what they want. I spent all of yesterday compiling a mental list, and I wrote it down as soon as I woke up this morning. Something on here has to be what they want to hear.”

There is a terrible, desperate, light in his eyes, and Nolofinwe decides that no bump on the head is enough to explain this. Either Feanaro is telling the truth, or he has gone utterly, irretrievably mad.

He hears steps creaking on the stairs, and Feanaro says, tiredly, “It’s Anaire. She’s going to knock three times and ask if you’re coming down to breakfast.” His nose wrinkles. “She’s also going to call you ‘sweetheart.’”

There are three raps on the door. “Sweetheart?” his wife calls. “Are you coming down to breakfast?”

Nolofinwe’s mouth has gone very dry. “No,” he manages to croak out. “No, I need to . . . think.”

Feanaro has mouthed along to every word.

“Alright,” his wife says with a sigh, and then she retreats back down the stairs.

“You could have guessed that,” he says, as soon as she’s gone.

“Or I could have come to your house on and off for the last fifty days as I try to figure out a way to fix this.”

It’s insane. It’s impossible.

He thinks he might almost believe it.

Feanaro either sees this or gives up on convincing him, because he pushes onward. “Number ten. I am sorry for the following insults I have rendered you over the years - “

Nolofinwe can see enough of the paper to realize he has an itemized list of these. He does not particularly want to hear it read. “Maybe you have to actually mean it,” he interrupts.

“I do mean it,” Feanaro snaps, and it is with such blazing sincerity that Nolofinwe cannot, for a moment, speak.

Oh.

_You are my brother. I love you._

He - had not expected to hear that.

Feanaro glares down at the paper, possibly as an excuse to not have to look at Nolofinwe. “Except maybe for this one,” he admits.

“That’s fair,” Nolofinwe says faintly. “I don’t regret most of the things I’ve called you for the past few decades either.”

There is an ominous creaking sound from above them. Nolofinwe looks up.

There’s a crack in the ceiling. There has been for months now; he keeps meaning to have it fixed, but there never seems to be time.

It’s getting wider now.

And it’s right over Feanaro’s head.

Feanaro doesn’t seem to notice. He’s still looking at the paper, gearing up for number eleven.

The creaking sound grows louder. Stone dust crumbles from the ceiling and starts to fall.

Feanaro looks up, his eyes going dark in absolute horror. 

Nolofinwe shoves himself off the bed, and collides into Feanaro, desperately trying to push him out of the way. There’s a sharp burning pain in his back - 

Nolofinwe wakes up to the sound of hammering.

There is a large barricade in front of his bedroom door. Someone is pounding on it.

Feanaro, meanwhile, is pounding on the nails he is using to drive a support beam into Nolofinwe’s bedroom ceiling, right over the crack he’s been meaning to have fixed.

For a moment, he is sure he is dreaming. 

“What are you doing?” he finally demands.

Feanaro doesn’t even glance down. “Good, you’re awake. Number eleven.”

“Eleven of what?” he demands.

Feanaro steamrolls on without bothering to answer.

It is, Nolofinwe suspects, going to be a very long day.

**Author's Note:**

> I have many complicated feelings about the tv show Supernatural, not all of them positive. However, I DO uncomplicatedly love the premise of the episode "Mystery Spot," and I got curious about how it might play out with two brothers who aren't . . . quite so willing to admit that they care about the other.
> 
> This was the result.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Half-brother, half-hatred](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23645503) by [starlightwalking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlightwalking/pseuds/starlightwalking)




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